What's your alternative to dominance by China? Dominance by Elon Musk? American industry has been fucking the dog since the 1980's. This is what we deserve.
This attitude is why Trump won. A statement like that sounds like you've stopped trying to make anything better, or to articulate a competing plan and convince voters to support it.
So, in this way, the self-loathing defeatism is partly responsible for people like Trump gaining more power.
Is it the UAW who has forced the automakers to make primarily those high-profit trucks, and to only design terrible EVs?
In my opinion the reason why we're in the dark ages of EVs is that a majority of Americans have range anxiety so our EVs have to weigh a lot and cost a lot to have 250 mile batteries, whereas everywhere else you can buy a car with an 80 mile range for a price poor people can actually afford.
Note - the range anxiety is both because of our car-centric (sub)urban design encouraging lifestyles where you drive 100 miles a day, and because of how a large number of urban dwellers and even suburban non-rich have no garages to do home charging. (And it's objectively far worse to own an EV for anyone who can't charge it at home.) All of this causes people to refuse to buy cars with say, 75-100 miles of range unless they're hybrids.
This attitude is why Trump won. A statement like that sounds like you've stopped trying to make anything better, or to articulate a competing plan and convince voters to support it.
So, in this way, the self-loathing defeatism is partly responsible for people like Trump gaining more power.